Alaska Mission Trip #4

Tuesday was Shaktoolik and we got into the originally scheduled pattern of assembly first during the day followed by an evening Rally for the whole community. (Unalakleet was the largest village at 800 until Nome which has about 3000. Shaktoolik was one street, houses on both sides and about 300 people.)

Shaktoolik School was great - all the schools were very modern and built recently - and we did both the assembly and the evening performance in the school gym.

The reception was always very warm. I found the local folks to be very easy to get to know and they would often initiate the conversations. We packed out the bleachers for the evening performance and had about one third of the town out. One of the local church leaders (they are currently without a pastor but have some strong lay people helping) is Palmer Sagoonik. He cooked up a great supper for us of fresh caught trout, rice, reindeer soup and then we added some leftover pie from Donna in Unalakleet. Very tasty.
Palmer is quite a character. Reindeer herder, crabber and fisherman and Iditarod racer. Palmer showed the characteristic Eskimo hospitality in a recent Iditarod race. You might like to hear some interesting audio from Palmer about Eskimo history.

That night the weather continued to be windy - in fact the pilots decided we needed to tie the plane down just to be safe. It was a continual pattern for the whole trip: will the weather allow us to fly to the next location? Often came down to the last minute decision by the pilots after carefully checking the weather reports online - we always had access to wireless internet and everyone had a Mac.

We got some local information about what they called "stink weed". The locals swear by it to stay healthy. Also heard from the locals about Grizzly bears and Polar bears. Don't mess with either one. We were told that if a Polar Bear sees you (they don't have very good eye site) you are on the menu.